Easter Day

Rachel and I woke up rather late on Easter morning. She didn’t open her Easter basket until around 11:30…mostly because I woke up at around 11:20 and put it together right before waking her up for the day. Sometimes a good sleep-in is a wonderful thing.

The candy was all from Lydia (thanks, Lydia!). Rachel totally scored. She got both Cars eggs and Princess eggs, Candy Eggs (like conversation hearts only eggs), and some Easter-themed tootsie pops. The candy eggs were her favorite thing to eat, although her favorite thing to do was open the plastic eggs.

She also got a kaleidoscope and some little bouncy-balls on string, neither of which she understood how to use very well. We confiscated those and are planning on putting them in her basket for next year. We’re stingy like that.

From us she got a set of bunny bowling pins. Instead of bowling she just threw the ball at the pins.

After we had gotten up and dressed, went through our Easter baskets, and had some brunch other than candy, we went to the Masons to dye eggs for the Annual Heiss Family Easter Egg Smackdown.

Rachel was a little reluctant to look at me or smile for the camera and you might notice the tear running down her cheek, even though she’s holding a crayon and coloring on an Easter egg.

That’s because of this little guy:

Finn was absolutely tormenting Rachel. He was pushing her and pulling her hair and stealing her toys. He doesn’t really look the type to play the bullying part, does he?

In the end there was a little bit of role reversal and Rachel ended up dominating the play scene and pushing Finn around a bit. From watching them you’d think the two of them never got together to play with each other, let alone with any other children. In truth they play together a couple of times a week—let alone the time they spend with different friends.

By now they should be able to get along but for whatever reason they end up bugging each other most of the time. It probably comes with the age…

I’ll have to get more pictures of our Easter Egg Smackdown 2009 from the Masons because our camera battery died after doing a few mug shots. Here are all the eggs we decorated. I did Humpty Dumpty and Pooh Bear. Rachel did the egg with Rachel written on it (she wanted to dye her egg rrrrwwwwwed!). Melissa did Nemo and the Scream Egg. Finn’s egg is the blue one called Bunny. Ummm…Andrew did a #1 egg and a #2 egg. Patrick did Yo Mamma, ND, and Psych-egg-delic. The Mummy egg is Melissa’s. And the one with the star is Andrew’s I think. I’ll have to check the bracket for the other names.

I believe ND ended up winning, which wasn’t really a surprise. Patrick seems to win every game or competition held in some form or another. Only one egg ended up splitting in half, which was kind of a disappointment, but it meant that we could salvage more of the eggs for deviled eggs.

That was kind of embarrassing. I hadn’t realized that other people were coming for dinner and that we’d be serving the mangled Easter Egg Smackdown Eggs to the rest of the company. No one seemed to mind, though.

The Lindsays (the humanitarian missionaries serving here) came over, as well as Joseph (an Egyptian member) and David (a Nigerian member). Sammi was there as well; she lives with the Masons and it was very interesting to have her there since she is Jewish. I’ve never celebrated Easter with a Jew before.

So while we ate our ham and Sammi ate her chicken, we learned all about Seder. Then Joseph told us about how his mom would kill a chicken on Easter and smear its blood on their door and how their egg-cracking traditions worked. Then David told us about how they get two weeks of vacation in Nigeria for Easter and how people go home and spend the whole vacation with their families, if they can. And Melissa told us about the casacarones traditional in her family.

The conversation never got dull.

After dinner we played on the Wii and watched in amazement as David, who had never played a gaming system in his life, skunked us all in bowling. He said it was very similar to how he would aim rocks at trees to knock down the “balls from the rubber trees.” He certainly had a different childhood than we did! I haven’t ever seen a rubber tree, let alone thrown rocks at one for fun.

David can be a little difficult to understand for us. He has a very strong Nigerian accent and sometimes it sounds like he isn’t speaking English at all. I had to laugh when I overheard him telling Patrick,

“You have to slow down, Patrick. It is difficult for me to understand the way you speak English.”

How many times have I wanted to tell David the exact same thing!

We had a wonderful Easter with our friends and even were able to sneak off for a few minutes and Skype with our families back home.

Rachel was so tired that she fell asleep on the way home. At least, I think she fell asleep on the way home. I have a sneaking suspicion that she didn’t actually fall asleep but really wanted to be asleep because although her eyes were closed she was very helpful and cooperative about getting into her pyjamas. She offered one leg and then the other and even held her bum off the bed so that I could pull her pants up around her hips. The whole time her eyes were closed and she didn’t make a peep.  At least she wasn’t fussing!

Happy Easter, everyone!